If youre thinking about how to lose some excess weight, then good news, you are in the right sport. Cycling is a fantastic way to do it.

So what are the best ways to lose weight by cycling? Lets check 10 practical tips to lose weight cycling that, I hope, will help you.

But before starting, lets keep in mind that losing weight is all about burning more calories than you consume. 

High-intensity vs. low-intensity cycling.

We were all told that lower-intensity training is the best way to burn a greater fat percentage. And this is true, but most of us have only a few hours to cycle daily.

On the other hand, while it is true that you burn a higher percentage of fat at lower intensities, you burn more fat at higher intensities. So sprints, intervals, and running flat for an hour are far better for burning fat than dawdling at a walking pace.

Did you hear about HIT (high-intensity interval training)? It doesnt sound very nice, but its guaranteed to help you burn loads of calories, so its an absolute winner. This method consists of repeating the HIT workout during your ride. The 2 steps of this workout are:

• Set your bike to your high-intensity resistance level for X seconds and pedal as hard and fast as possible.
• Set your bike to your low-intensity resistance level for X seconds, catch your breath, and recover.

You can choose the duration of each step, depending on your level (between 60 to 100 seconds).

In addition, after an intense ride, you generally feel slightly less hungry than after a long, slow ride.

High-intensity intervals at the end of your rides

Even if high-intensity interval training is not for you, you can still do yourself a lot of good by making a couple of high-intensity intervals right at the end of your ride.

 Studies have shown that post-exercise, oxygen consumption can help burn fat. So the best way to get into that state is to make some high-intensity efforts towards the end of the ride, and that way, your body will still be burning calories even after you finish your ride.

Drinking water

Drinking water is excellent for weight loss: drinking a big glass of water, especially after your ride, is an appetite suppressant. After youve had a fair bit, Itll settle your stomach. That way, when having your meal, you wont feel quite hungry and will be less likely to overeat. 

By the way, you could also use this trick before your main meals of the day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and even before your mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack.

Eating frequency

when youre out on your ride, take some solid food and carbohydrate drinks.

Yes, eating more than you usually do might sound counterintuitive, especially when trying to lose weight. Still, The tendency when trying to lose weight is to restrict the amount you eat while exercising, which can lead to overeating problems after your ride. And thats not good because you could consume more calories than you just burned on your ride.

So For your rides over 90 minutes, youll need to eat little and often. Youll feel much less hungry when youre back home.

Food Pleasures as a reward for good training

One other tendency when riders try to lose weight is to cut out the guilty pleasures altogether, whatever they may be: chocolate, cakes, or fast food, but just like drastically reducing your calories, trying to cut everything entirely from your diet could leave you to crack.

The win-win solution would be to use these pleasures as a reward for achieving your training goals or for the extra round you decided to add at the end of your ride. 

This will keep you motivated and prevents you from feeling deprived of these little pleasures.

Indoor training

If you cant go for a ride outside,  you may get the same results from two short, well-timed rides on the same day. Here is what you can do:

Before breakfast, do a half an hour HIT session with the home trainer with some tough, short intervals. Making the morning session before eating is essential because that will help boost the metabolism to help promote weight loss. 

After dinner, do the second session a couple of hours before bed. And that will keep your metabolism burning brightly through the night.

Fix goals and track weight

To achieve your long-term goal in terms of weight loss, youll need to define a strategy that youll adapt. Here are some steps :

• Fixe reasonable short-term goals and keep them written down, for example, losing 0.5 kg a week,
• Define a plan to achieve this short-term goal and stick to it
• Track your results with a chart of your weight evolution
• After a few weeks, have an honest look at your results. And adapt your plan if you didnt achieve your results.

Make sure you keep your goals achievable because theres nothing worse than setting goals that arent attainable.

 Keep a regular track of your weight at the same time every day in the same conditions.

 If you keep some graph of your weight, then what you should find over time, in several months, is that the general trend of the line is going downwards toward your long-term goal.

Not try to sweat a lot.

Some people might suggest some techniques to sweat more to produce instantaneous and potentially significant weight loss, for example, by wearing extra layers of clothes and deliberately overheating.

Unfortunately, sweating it out does not work as a reliable weight loss tactic as well as being potentially dangerous. all of the weight will come back on as soon as you are well hydrated

Wearing weights 

It has been proven that wearing a weighted vest or a full backpack can increase the intensity of the basic exercises, potentially increasing the speed at which you lose weight and get better muscles.

For those who choose this technique, there are many performance benefits. However, the only thing to be careful about has good riding technique in the first place to avoid getting injured.

Cold days

Somethings been said that we burn more calories for exercising at the same intensity when its cold compared to when its warm. The theory is that we burn more energy simply by maintaining our core body temperature. However, recent studies have shown that while we burn more calories when its cold, only when were shivering. 

We burn more energy trying to keep our bodies cool when were hot than the other way. 

So youd better do your home training indoors than venturing into the icy conditions, as youre burning more calories and losing more weight.

Training frequency

You will be on your way if you incorporate two or three of those sessions into your weekly training routine. 

CONCLUSION

Lets make a recap on how to lose weight by cycling:

• Make sure you incorporate plenty of high-intensity rides.
• Training two or three times a week is a good frequency.
• Drink water strategically.
• Use Food Pleasures as a reward.
• Eat regularly on longer rides.
• Throw in a couple of intervals at the end of your steady rides.
• Make goals and write them down.
• Dont overdress to try to lose weight.
• Wearing weights has many performance benefits, but be careful to get injured.
• Youd better do your home training indoors on cold days.

Now its important to note that weight loss can only be achieved by going into a calorie deficit, so any weight loss technique needs to be combined with a healthy balanced diet portion control.

What about you? Which tips are you going to do?

Thank you in advance for sharing your experiences in the comment section